Sacrifices Need Not Be Bloody
by vasher
Summary: But then he remembers. Aeris was smiling when she died. In-game. SephirothxCloud


A/N: I'd forgotten about this story. Older one I found while I was sorting through my fics—old school and slightly insane Cloud, just like I like him. Enjoy.

-o-

There's not enough blood.

He gently lowers her body into the pool, trying not to shift her unresponsive limbs or muss her neat hair and he thinks that there's not nearly enough blood.

Only a little trickle of it shows on her dress, just a few splotches of red that he has to look for, going drip drip drip into the cold water and dissolving into nothing when it hits the surface.

He wonders maybe if the cut were so clean, so precise, that it just parted her flesh and bones and skin, but left all the blood still gathered inside. It seemed like something Sephiroth would do. Or maybe Aeris felt bad about bleeding all over the floor, about staining that perfect chalky-white marble, and decided not to bleed at all. That seemed like something Aeris would do.

But she's dead now and he doesn't know what _he_ should do.

The quiet voice in the back of his head that likes to whisper hints and advice and bawdy jokes is silent. He feels like he wants to cry and scream and hug her tightly to his chest, but that's odd because he hasn't known her for very long, even if she seemed like a nice person.

He doesn't do any of those things, but watches her sink down farther and farther until there's nothing left to watch.

His clothes feel cold and clammy when he wades out—sticky too. It feels like the water won't let him go. That scares him for a moment and he thinks that Aeris might be mad, that she's angry with him for not saving her and she wants to punish him. He thinks that he might deserve it.

But then he remembers. Aeris was smiling when she died.

There's something not quite right with that. But then, none of this is quite right.

Blank and empty stares greet him when he reaches the others. They look at him with worried, sad eyes that ask things of him that he isn't ready to tell. If he even knows enough to answer in the first place. He shoves these thoughts away, back down with that quiet silent voice and tries to put his fears, his thoughts into words that never manage to convey _anything_ very well.

They seem to understand, though, and at least he has company now when he'll go fail spectacularly at beating Sephiroth. Tifa in particular looks like she needs comfort and he really wishes that he knew how to make her happy. But he doesn't, so he passes by with just an awkward pat on her arm.

She surprises him by holding out Aeris' ribbon with a hand that almost doesn't tremble.

That's right, he thinks, her pretty bow came off when she died.

He takes it with a nod and promises to keep it in a safe place. But he's never been very good at keeping promises and he doesn't know if he'll be able to keep this one either.

-o-

Sephiroth holds him like he's made out of spun glass, brittle and delicate and transparent—something to be protected and cherished from the world. Or maybe protected from itself. He can't quite remember right now, especially with the image of soft green eyes (nothing at all cold or malicious in them) still so fresh.

Cloud imagines that he can see the black leather of those gloves stained with blood. But that's ridiculous because Sephiroth would never let something so disgustingly human touch his clothes. And then he wonders why Sephiroth would touch him.

But that makes him feel uneasy and he stops wondering.

His great idol, the war hero of Wutai, the General, murmuring dark nothings in his ear when he reaches out to touch some of that long silver waterfall of hair. But he's scared, so scared because his sword is all the way over there and there's a finger trailing up and down his neck and this feels too good to be real.

Maybe that's why Sephiroth does it, because Cloud can never ever say no to him.

That sounds right.

He thinks that he should feel guilty, that it's so much worse to take comfort in the arms of her killer than anything else he's done before. Her killer, and the one that Cloud couldn't stop from burning his hometown to the ground. And, if he's honest with himself, he does feel guilty, like a dirty, _cheating—_but there's never very much left of him that notices.

At least, never during these moments.

Cloud doesn't resist the way his limbs are carefully arranged, tucked against the warm, perfect chest that's much too familiar. The slow, steady rise of his pulse comes easily, and he lets the grind of their hips draw him down into something very near to what he imagines the Promised Land would be like. He almost wishes that there'd be some hurt, some pain to stop everything from feeling so _good_.

Those slitted eyes are puzzled now—his puppet seems a little more broken than before. Toys aren't supposed to have feelings. Toys don't _have_ feelings, not really.

Maybe if Cloud tells himself that enough times, it'll become true.

Maybe Sephiroth tells himself often enough that he doesn't mind Jenova pulling his own gilded strings.

-o-


End file.
